"I am just a Sukuma"

Author: Frans Wijsen
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2016-08-29
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004334319

Introduction -- Culture and identity among the Sukuma -- Origin and growth of Sukuma identity -- The intrusions of colonialism -- The hopes and frustrations of socialist ideology -- The Sukuma and the ideology of a free market -- Sukuma identity and modernization -- References -- About the authors.

"I Am Just a Sukuma"

Author: Frans Jozef Servaas Wijsen
Publisher: Rodopi
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2002
Genre: History
ISBN: 9789042015883

Contents: 1. Culture and identity among the Sukuma. - 2. Origin and growth of Sukuma identity. - 3. The intrusions of colonialism. - 4. The hopes and frustrations of socialist ideology. - 5. The Sukuma and the ideology of a free market. - 6. Sukuma identity and modernization.

Sukuma Labor Songs from Western Tanzania

Sukuma Labor Songs from Western Tanzania
Author: Frank D. Gunderson
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 568
Release: 2010
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004184686

This volume is an interpretive analysis of a collection of 335 song texts treated as primary historical sources. The collection highlights the cultural practices that link music with labor in Sukuma communities in northwestern Tanzania. These linkages are evident in the music of the elephant, snake, and porcupine hunting associations that flourished in the precolonial epoch, in the nineteenth-century regional and long-distance porter associations, and in the farmer associations that have proliferated since the beginning of the twentieth century. Acting primarily as an interpretive editor, the author collaborated with several Tanzanian scholars and translators towards fine-tuning the translation of these texts into English, and gathered testimonies in order to create succinct interpretive statements about the songs.

Religion at Work in Globalised Traditions

Religion at Work in Globalised Traditions
Author: Anders Kaliff
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2014-03-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 1443858765

Why do traditions disappear? How is the disappearance of tradition also a vehicle for social change and re-inventions of practices and new traditions? Using case studies from one Sukuma area along the southern shores of Lake Victoria in Tanzania, global processes of how religions work in practice are analysed by focusing on rainmaking, witchcraft and Christianity. Traditionally, Sukuma society was culturally and cosmologically structured around the chief, the ancestors and rainmaking. Everything was dependent upon the rain. Rainmaking as a ritual practice has disappeared and ancestral propitiations are declining, while, at the same time, Christianity is spreading and witchcraft and witch killings are increasing. Although Christianity as a religion may provide answers and hopes for life after death, the religion provides few solutions in the here and now when it comes to poverty and suffering; problems and challenges that have to be solved. Witchcraft, on the other hand, does, or is believed to do so – and the increase in witchcraft is analysed in relation to the impacts of more than a century of globalisation from the missionaries and colonizers onwards. With the declining ancestral tradition, witchcraft and Christianity as religious practices supplement each other in the ways they are believed to work in providing answers, solutions or divine interferences in different realms; this world and the Otherworld. Offering an approach going beyond structural functionalism on different premises, the book’s focus on religion at work will facilitate new understandings of how to study religion as it is perceived and believed in practice.

The Religious Nile

The Religious Nile
Author: Terje Oestigaard
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 689
Release: 2018-07-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1838609636

The Nile is arguably the most famous river in the world. For millennia, the search for its source defeated emperors and explorers. Yet the search for its source also contained a religious quest - a search for the origin of its divine and life-giving waters. Terje Oestigaard reveals how the beliefs associated with the river have played a key role in the cultural development and make-up of the societies and civilizations associated with it. Drawing upon his personal experience and fieldwork in Africa, including details of rites and ceremonies now fast disappearing, the author brings out in rich detail the religious and spiritual meanings attached to the life-giving waters by those whose lives are so bound to the river. Part religious quest, part exploration narrative, the author shows how this mighty river is a powerful source for a greater understanding of human nature, society and religion.

Christian Remnant - African Folk Church

Christian Remnant - African Folk Church
Author: Stefan Höschele
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 644
Release: 2007-11-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9047422686

The growth of Christianity in Africa during the twentieth century is one of the most fascinating shifts in the history of religions. This book presents a history of the Tanzanian Seventh-day Adventist Church, which is representative of this shift in many respects: slow beginnings, struggles over cultural issues, the emergence of a unique church life combining denominational heritage and African elements, frictions with governments, and the development of popular theology. Yet Tanzanian Adventism also exemplifies an important phenomenon which has been given little attention so far - the transformation of minority denominations to dominant religions. This study breaks new ground in analyzing how the Adventist “remnant” developed into an African “folk church” while attempting to remain true to its original ethos.

Culture and Customs of Tanzania

Culture and Customs of Tanzania
Author: Kefa M. Otiso
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 441
Release: 2013-01-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:

This book provides a fascinating, up-to-date overview of the social, cultural, economic, and political landscapes of Tanzania. In Culture and Customs of Tanzania, author Kefa M. Otiso presents an approachable basic overview of the country's key characteristics, covering topics such as Tanzania's land, peoples, languages, education system, resources, occupations, economy, government, and history. This recent addition to Greenwood's Culture and Customs of Africa series also contains chapters that portray the culture and social customs of Tanzania, such as the country's religion and worldview; literature, film, and media; art, architecture, and housing; cuisine and traditional dress; gender roles, marriage, family structures, and lifestyle; and music, dance, and drama.

Native Peoples of the World

Native Peoples of the World
Author: Steven L. Danver
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 2475
Release: 2015-03-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317463994

This work examines the world's indigenous peoples, their cultures, the countries in which they reside, and the issues that impact these groups.

Communities of Faith in Africa and the African Diaspora

Communities of Faith in Africa and the African Diaspora
Author: Casely B. Essamuah
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 389
Release: 2014-01-13
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1630873071

Communities of Faith is a collection of essays on the multicultural Christian spirit and practices of churches around the world, with particular attention to Africa and the African diaspora. The essays span history, theology, anthropology, ecumenism, and missiology. Readers will be treated to fresh perspectives on African Pentecostal higher education, Pentecostalism and witchcraft in East Africa, Methodist camp meetings in Ghana, Ghanaian diaspora missions in Europe and North America, gender roles in South African Christian communities, HIV/AIDS ministries in Uganda, Japanese funerary rites, enculturation and contextualization principles of mission, and many other aspects of the Christian world mission. With essays from well-known scholars as well as young and emerging men and women in academia, Communities of Faith illuminates current realities of world Christianity and contributes to the scholarship of today's worldwide Christian witness.

Moral Time

Moral Time
Author: Donald Black
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2011-04-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0199831602

Conflict is ubiquitous and inevitable, but people generally dislike it and try to prevent or avoid it as much as possible. So why do clashes of right and wrong occur? And why are some more serious than others? In Moral Time, sociologist Donald Black presents a new theory of conflict that provides answers to these and many other questions. The heart of the theory is a completely new concept of social time. Black claims that the root cause of conflict is the movement of social time, including relational, vertical, and cultural time--changes in intimacy, inequality, and diversity. The theory of moral time reveals the causes of conflict in all human relationships, from marital and other close relationships to those between strangers, ethnic groups, and entire societies. Moreover, the theory explains the origins and clash of right and wrong not only in modern societies but across the world and across history, from conflict concerning sexual behavior such as rape, adultery, and homosexuality, to bad manners and dislike in everyday life, theft and other crime, racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism, witchcraft accusations, warfare, heresy, obscenity, creativity, and insanity. Black concludes by explaining the evolution of conflict and morality across human history, from the tribal to the modern age. He also provides surprising insights into the postmodern emergence of the right to happiness and the expanding rights of humans and non-humans across the world. Moral Time offers an incisive, powerful, and radically new understanding of human conflict--a fundamental and inescapable feature of social life.